Newsletter June 2015

Dear and esteemed EGTMA member,

As we are approaching the 2nd half of the year, many of you have wondered whether there will be any more press trips scheduled. We’ve had of course a immensely oversubscribed return trip to the North & West Coast Links in Ireland where many of you were disappointed not to have been selected to participate. Unfortunately, there were limited places and on top of that, strict criteria as to which countries and media journalists were to come from. 

As a reminder of that trip, here´s a link to a CNN, Living Golf report about the region.

http://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2015/06/04/living-golf-padraig-harrington-b-spc.cnn

There are a few reasons why we haven’t had as many trips this year as we’ve had in the past although we still have 7 months to go ! My work situation has obliged me to devote all of my time to the business, with many changes over the course of the last 12 months, I have hardly had any time to really go after destinations. The one thing I can see though is that we seem to have become the victim of our own success. From social media I can see that many of you have no shortage of invitations to go on press trips. Our work over the past 9 years have brought notoriety to our members and while we approach destinations, we often hear that they have had individual members return or visit following previous press trips and that they know don’t really need our ‘help’ any more which is obviously great for our members and mission accomplished I would say.

So, obviously you are all curious as to what is in the pipeline for the remainder of the year ?

There are several destinations still looking at hosting an EGTMA event but the most imminent are Estonia where golf is starting to grow. The region of Porto is not adverse to a return visit of our journalists as they are plotting their way on to the golf tourism centre stage and at the end of the year, a visit to Mallorca and Son Antem is on the cards. Added to these three events, we are also having discussions with the Carrick on Loch Lomond and the Martin’s Hotels Group and the coastal region surrounding Bruges. 

We also call on members who in their own country have excellent contacts with courses, tourist boards etc. and would like to showcase their ‘home’ country to the world … like some of us have already done in the past, become EGTMA ambassadors as it were ! Do not hesitate to contact us and put it all together. I know some of you have already approached us to organise an event for 2016 ! 

Mentioning 2016 brings me to the following. We have now gone 9 years and over these years we’ve organised over 40 media trips. Next year we will be having our 10th anniversary and we are already planning some great events to celebrate a decade of golf & travel journalism !

Looking forward to the rest of the year !

Jo Maes,

Your President... always and forever :-)